V, 



,v 







UNVEILING 



WARD'S EQUESTRIAN STATUE 



MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS, 



WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 19, 1879. 



ADDRESS 



STANLEY MATTHEWS. 



CINCINNATI: 
ROBERT CLARKE & CO., PRINT. 



1879. 



UNVEILING 



WARD'S EQUESTRIAN STATUE 



MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS, 



WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 19, 1879. 



ADDRESS 



STANLEY MATTHEWS. 



CINCINNATI: 
ROBERT CLARKE & CO., PRINT. 

1879. 






r&5°n 



XCHAN6E 



Jon 6 i9U 



ADDRESS. 



According to the Mythology of the Ancient Greeks, 
Memory was the Mother of the Muses; so that, as Plu- 
tarch tells, the completed Sisterhood of Nine was included 
under the common name of Remembrances. 

The truth in the fiction is, that History is the parent 
of Art. And as Nature is the Art whereby God consti- 
tutes and governs the World, because it is the Revelation 
of the Invisible and Eternal, in forms of Sublimity and 
Beauty, to the mind of man ; so Human Art, in all its 
varied forms — Poetry, Eloquence, Music, Painting, Sculp- 
ture, Architecture — is but the Interpreter and Expounder 
of the Divine Art, and fixes in its express and admirable 
forms whatsoever that is Divine, which it discovers in 
Nature or in Man. The Heroic in action and suffering 
must precede, because it inspires, the Heroic in repre- 
sentation. Man must become conscious of the noble and 
the good before he can express it ; and he can become 
conscious of it only in his experience. Gods and heroes 
walked the earth, and wrought their wonders in action and 
suffering, before Phidias and Praxiteles could embody 
them. 

Achilles, first; afterward, Homer. And Art is there- 
fore, if a prophecy, nevertheless, only because it is a 
Memorial ; for it is on the prepared and receptive back- 
ground of the Past that it paints or carves visions of 
the glory it foretells. Lord Bacon said : cc As statues 

(3) 



[4] 

and pictures are dumb histories, so histories are speaking 
pictures." 

The name of George Henry Thomas — Soldier and 
Patriot — has already been inscribed on that scroll of hon- 
orable fame which posterity will reverently guard in the 
archives of our National History. To-day, Art sum- 
moned to its proper work, lifts aloft the dignity and 
majesty of his person^ as the Society of the Army of the 
Cumberland, by these public acts and solemn ceremonials, 
dedicates to the people of the United -States the form and 
presence of its beloved commander. 

Surely this was a noble subject for the modeler's 
plastic hand ! What dignity and power, what firmness 
and self-possession, what immobility, and yet what quiet 
graciousness, what gravity and what benignity, were set 
together in the manly proportions of his physical frame ! 
A presence to inspire respect, but winning confidence and 
trust! He was large, firm-planted, and paternal, like a 
sturdy oak, striking its roots deep in the earth, but with 
outspreading branches offering protection and shelter 
from fierce heats or fiercer storms. Large and weighty-, 
his movements were easy and quiet ; his postures and 
gestures unobtrusive, so that his port and mien suggested 
a reserve of strength not called into action. Thus his 
physical power seemed to be magnified, and yet there was 
nothing in him ponderous, overwhelming, or boisterous, 
and he breathed and spoke gently and in soft tones, like a 
woman or a child. In fine, he was 

" A combination and a form, indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set li is seal 
To s^ive the world assurance of a man." 



[5] 

The proportions of his physical frame were in har- 
mony with those of the spiritual body which inhabited and 
animated it. The internal, as well as the external, man 
was statuesque, massive, monumental. Vigor and endur- 
ance were qualities alike of his material and his mental 
constitution. Strength, was the base and pediment on 
which was grounded and built up the lofty structure of his 
character, capped and crowned with simplicity — " whole 
in himself" — a shaft and column of Doric style and 
beauty — 

" Rich in saving common-sense, 
And as the greatest only are, 
In his simplicity, sublime." 

" O good gray head, which all men knew, 
O iron nerve to true occasion true, 
.O fall'n at length that tower of strength 
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!" 

There was nothing in him fluctuating, mercurial, or 
eccentric. He was set, inflexible, undeviating, steering 
steadily by the stars, upon the arc of a great circle. He 
was resolute, unyielding, with a fortitude incapable of in- 
timidation or dismay, and yet without pretention, boast- 
ing, self-assertion, or noisy demonstration. He was con- 
spicuous for modesty and dignity, and was altogether free 
from affectation or envy. 

He did not lack in proper self esteem ; but did not 
think more highly of himself than he ought. Better 
than any other man could, he took the measure of his 
own dimensions, and never worried lest he might be over- 
looked or neglected, not doubting that sooner or later he 



[6] 

would gravitate by his own weight and power to his pre- 
destined place, over all opposition and contradiction. 

But he was not coarse, vulgar, and impassive — care- 
less of the good opinion of good men ; rather, on the 
contrary, he was quick in his sensibilities, keen to detect 
the selfishness of others, and smarted under a sense of 
injustice, when inflicted upon himself. Yet no personal 
consideration ever warped his judgment or clouded his 
sense of duty. He was genial and frank in his communi- 
cations, yet reticent and self contained as to all that related 
to himself, neither inviting nor volunteering confidences. 
As he had nothing to conceal, his whole character was so 
transparent that he never opened himself to misconstruc- 
tions. He did not take refuge from suspicions of 
ignorance in an affectation of the mystery of silence; for 
he was as a living epistle, known and read of all men. 
No conspicuous man in our recent history is better known 
as to his inmost character, more thoroughly understood, 
or more correctly appreciated ; so that there is no reason 
to believe that the judgment of posterity as to his place 
in history will be other than a record of contemporary 
opinion. There lies buried with him, in his grave, no 
mystery, to pluck the heart out of which will require that 
he should ever be disturbed in his resting-place. 

It is not too much to say of General Thomas that 
he was a model soldier. Arms was his chosen profession. 
The whole period of his life, from youth to his untimely 
death, was spent in its study and practice. He had no 
ambition outside of it. His only ambition in it was to 
attain the rewards it held out to merit. He envied no 



[7] 

superior his rank. He was in no haste to rise upon the 
misfortunes of orhers. He recognized but one way to 
glory — the path of duty. 

He perfected himself by patient painstaking in all 
its details. He carefully learned the duties of high 
command by a thorough practical experience of those of 
every inferior and subordinate responsibility. He became, 
thus, an adept in the knowledge and use of every arm of 
the service, and learned as an apprentice to handle and 
work every part of the great machinery and enginery of 
war. 

At the age of twenty, in 1836, he entered the Mili- 
tary Academy. In 1840, having graduated, he was 
commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, and rose, succes- 
sively, through every intermediate grade, until, on De- 
cember 15, 1864, the date of the first day's battle at 
Nashville, he was promoted to be a Major- General in the 
Army of the United States. 

In each stage in his military history he saw active 
service, appropriate to his rank ; receiving his first Brevet 
while a Second Lieutenant, for gallantry and good con- 
duct, in 1 841, in the war against the Florida Indians; in 
the war against Mexico, in 1846-48, at Fort Brown, 
Monterey, and Buena Vista ; again, in Florida, in 1849- 
50, against the Seminoles ; as an instructor of artillery 
and cavalry in the Military Academy, from 1851 to 1854; 
on frontier duty in California and in Texas ; until the 
breaking out of the Civil War, in 1861, found him a 
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second Cavalry, of which he 
then became Colonel. 



[8] 

These were the days and years of preparation — of the 
study and practice of military art — the formation of 
military habits — the education and training of the military 
character — the development and cultivation of the mili- 
tary instinct. And the seed sown during this season bore 
its ample fruits in due time. 

At the beginning of the Rebellion, in 1861, he had 
attained the forty-fifth year of his age, the full age of a 
matured and ripened manhood. He was no longer in the 
flush and hey-day of impetuous youth. He had grown 
to his stature, gradually and slowly, as always grows tim- 
ber, close-grained and of fine fiber. What he was capable 
of doing he had learned to do in the usual exercise and 
natural processes of his understanding. He was neither 
a genius, accomplishing results without apparent means, 
by lightning strokes of magic and mere will ; nor was he 
a favorite child of fortune, winning success, by accident 
and chance, against odds, plucking the flower safety out 
of the nettle danger, when, by the common laws of hu- 
man conduct, he ought to have suffered the penalty of 
rashness and improvidence. One of the valuable lessons- 
of his military career is, that every success rests upon the 
rational basis of a thorough organization of the means 
necessary to insure it ; that valor is nothing better than 
blind and bloody persistence, unless supported on either 
flank by knowledge and prudence. 

This was the secret of one of the chief character- 
istics of his work — its thoroughness. He did nothing by 
halves. He wasted no material or time in experiments, 
the issue of which was indeterminate. He did not worry 



[9] 

and wear out his ranks in purposeless marches and coun- 
ter-marches, to make them believe he was doing some- 
thing, when he was not. He carefully nursed and pro- 
vided for them, so as to bring his troops to the highest 
point in spirit and efficiency, and kept them well in hand. 
He determined what most important end was reasonably 
practicable ; he matured the plan best adapted to secure 
its accomplishment, and carefully gathered and organized 
the means necessary for its execution. And then, when 
all things were ready, he launched the dread thunderbolt 
of power, and, with one stroke, dealt the destruction he had 
devised. Mill Springand Nashville — his first and lastbattle 
in the West — are capital illustrations of this feature of his 
military character. In reference to this last memorable 
and decisive battle of Nashville, the importunity and im- 
patience of his superiors, at a distance too great to appre- 
ciate the difficulties of his situation, provoked from him 
no complaint. He telegraphed to the then Lieutenant- 
General — " I can only say I have done all in my power 
to prepare, and if you should deem it necessary to relieve 
me I shall submit without a murmur." When the time 
arrived for the delivery of the meditated blow, and its 
complete and thorough success was known, he received 
ample compensation for this temporary distrust, in hearty 
and ungrudging congratulations, from President, Secretary 
of War, and Lieutenant-General, as creditable to them as 
they were gratifying and just to him, confirmed as they 
were, by the thanks of Congress, for the skill and daunt- 
less courage by which the rebel army, under General Hood, 



. [ io J 

was signally defeated and driven from the State of Ten- 
nessee. 

Speaking of the circumstances of that occasion, Gen. 
J. D. Cox, a most competent judge, himself a most hon- 
orable participant in its trials and its triumphs, in his 
oration at Chicago, in 1868, said : 

" Fortunately our commander at Nashville was a 
man of Washingtonian character and will, and knowing 
that his country's cause depended upon his being right, 
and not upon his merely seeming so, he waited with im- 
movable firmness for the right hour to come. It came, 
and with it a justification of both his military skill and 
his own self-forgetful patriotism, so complete and glorious, 
that it would be a mere waste of words for me to talk 
about it." 

This episode finely illustrates, not only the temper 
of that crisis in our public affairs, but the best character- 
istics of its chief figure. 

It was the dictate of a sound and prudent judgment, 
and became the habit of his life, to assume no important 
responsibility, which he did not feel well prepared to- 
meet. We have seen that at Nashville, with the expe- 
rience of more than three years of constant and active 
service, he was willing rather to be relieved from his com- 
mand than to accept the responsibility of a movement he 
believed to be premature. In an earlier stage of his ser- 
vice, he resisted the temptation of ambition by declining 
what amounted to promotion, because he was able to 
prefer the public good to his personal advancement. In 
the fall of 1862, the circumstances, as related by General 



[11 ] . 

Buell himself, in a private, unpublished note, were as fol- 
lows : 

"The army was to move on the 30th of September 
against Bragg, who occupied Bardstown, Frankfort, and 
in fact the whole of Central Kentucky. On the morning 
of the 29th an order was received from Washington, as- 
signing General Thomas to the command in my stead. 
He very soon came to my room and stated his intention 
to ask the revocation of the order — that he was not pre- 
pared by information and study for the responsibility of 
the command. I tried to dissuade him, told him that I 
would give him all of my information and plans, and as- 
sured him of my confidence in his success. Finding him 
determined, I said that I could under no circumstances 
consent to his sending a dispatch which could imply that 
I had any wish or influence in the matter. He promised 
that much, went away, and after awhile returned with the 
the message which he had prepared for General Halleck. 
I thought that he was actuated in his course by a gener- 
ous confidence in me and a modest distrust of himself 
with so little warning; and I considered that both motives 
did honor to his sterling character." 

His language in the dispatch referred to was this: 

"General Buell's preparations have been completed 
to move against the enemy, and I therefore respectfully 
ask that he may be retained in command. My position 
is very embarrassing, not being as well informed as I 
should be, as the commander of this army and on the 
assumption of such responsibility." 

But the quality, which more than all others specifi- 



[12] 

cally and constitutionally distinguished General Thomas, 
was his invincibility — his heroic faculty for enduring, un- 
wearied, and successful obstinacy in defense. It was not 
mere brute courage nor insensibility to danger. Neither 
was it mere resoluteness and stoutness of heart, nor a 
certain sullen defiance, which in some cases has seemed to 
await an expected adversity. It was cheerful and sweet 
tempered, although of supreme seriousness and intensity. 
But its chief faculty was its contagion, by which it prop- 
agated its fearlessness and hopefulness to the whole body 
of his support; so that every soldier in his company felt 
an assurance of security and success in his presence and 
authority. The latent heat of his passion grew into a 
glow under heavy hammering, and spread through all the 
particles that adhered and gathered to it, until the fused 
and molten mass, red hot with its combustion, consumed 
every thing that approached it. It was the sympathy of 
confidence and self-devotion that indissolubly bound to- 
gether commander and men, and made them jointly in- 
vincible. It was a shield which quenched the fiery darts 
of the adversary — an armor of tempered steel, which none 
of his arrows could pierce. 

A signal illustration of this power of resistance is 
furnished by the course of battle at Stone River, where 
he stayed the tide of rebel success with his immovable 
front. But its most conspicuous example is seen on the 
last day's fighting at Chickatnauga. In his memorial 
oration at Cleveland in 1870, General Garfield — himself 
soldier, scholar, and statesman — has, in a tribute, of 
which the highest praise is to say that it is worthy both 



[ 13] 

of himself and of its theme, in most felicitous phrase, 
has drawn his picture as he appeared in that scene. He 
says : 

"While men shall read the history of battles, they 
will never fail to study and admire the work of Thomas 
during that afternoon. With but twenty-five thousand 
men, formed in a semi-circle, of which he himself was the 
center and soul, he successfully resisted for more than five 
hours the repeated assaults of an army of sixty-five thou- 
sand men, flushed with victory and bent on his annihila- 
tion. . . . When night had closed over the combat- 
ants, the last sound of battle was the booming of Thomas' 
shells bursting among his baffled and retreating assailants. 
He was indeed the ' Rock of Chickamauga,' against which 
the wild waves of battle dashed in vain. It will stand 
written forever in the annals of his country that there he 
saved from destruction the Army of the Cumberland." 

A day of onsets of despair! 

Dash'd on every rocky square, 

Their surging charges foamed themselves away. 

Speaking of him in the General Order announcing 
his death, the General of the Army, in terms both just 
and warm, recorded and published his estimate of the 
character and career of General Thomas. He said : 

" The General has known General Thomas inti- 
mately since they sat, as boys, on the same bench, and 
the quality in him, which he holds up for the admiration 
and example of the young, is his complete and entire de- 
votion to duty. Though sent to Florida, to Mexico, to 
Texas, to Arizona, when duty there was absolute ban- 



[ 14] 

ishment, he went cheerfully, and never asked a personal 
favor, exemption, or leave of absence. In battle he 
never wavered. Firm, and of full faith in his cause, he 
knew it would prevail, and he never sought advancement 
of rank or honor at the expense of any one. Whatever 
he earned of these was his own, and no one disputes his 
fame. The very impersonation of honesty, integrity, and 
honor, he will stand to us as the beau ideal of the sol- 
dier and gentleman." 

General Thomas, in his simple and modest way, has 
left on record a statement concerning himself, which will 
be accepted now without question. In a letter of No- 
vember 26, 1869, expressing his regret that he would not 
be able to attend the reunion of the Society of the Army 
of the Cumberland that year, at Indianapolis, he said : 

" It was my hearty desire, from the beginning to the 
end of the late war, to accept with cheerfulness and per- 
form with zeal and honesty, whatever duties devolved 
upon me. At the same time it was my constant endeavor 
to impress those who were with me and under my com- 
mand with a sense of the importance of the services they- 
had undertaken to perform." 

These sentences show that George H. Thomas was 
something more and better than merely a soldier. He 
was a patriot. He had a country and a cause, and in 
their defense he drew his sword. The principles and in- 
terests for which he periled his life and staked his fame, 
more even than the gallant service he performed in their 
behalf, great and distinguished as it was, justify the cele- 
bration of this day. The occasion seems appropriate for 



[ 15] 

a statement and vindication of the grounds on which they 
are established and now securely rest. 

The reason and religion of all ages and races have 
recognized the love of country as a nobler passion than 
the love of life. The pleasure-loving Greek identified 
piety with patriotism ; and Pericles, when he pronounced 
the panegyric over the slain heroes of the Peloponesian 
war, knew not how to eulogize them better than to praise 
the institutions of their country, which was capable of 
producing citizens willing to die in their defense. The 
Latin poet framed a phrase of Roman devotedness for all 
times and lands when he sang, ' c DuIce et decorum est 
pro patria mori." The Christian religion, although its 
founder is the Prince of Peace, and its advent was herald- 
ed by heavenly voices, proclaiming, " Peace on earth ; 
good will to men," nevertheless has sanctioned and sancti- 
fied, by the example of its Divine author, that spirit of 
self sacrifice which is the essence of all disinterested ser- 
vice which man can render to mankind ; and teaches that 
as the only true life is not the life of the body, but the 
life of God in the human soul, so the ends for which life 
was given are of more value than mere living. Reason 
and instinct combine to uphold the private law of self- 
defense ; and the preservation of the State, at the expense 
of individual life, is but an extension and enlargement of 
the same principle in the domain of public law. For the 
maintenance of the social and political state is essential to 
the development of the individual destiny, and its life is 
part of the life of every citizen. 

The law of all civil society, and under every form of 



[16] 

government, has classed treason and rebellion with capital 
crimes, worthy of death ; too often when the sovereignty 
defied was embodied in the person of a monarch, pervert- 
ing the presumptions of guilt and magnifying the unreal- 
ized imaginations and intentions of the accused into overt 
acts of crime. Our own Constitution, jealous of liberty 
and vet mindful of the obligations of a loyal citizenship 
to a form of government founded on popular assent and 
essential to the preservation of public and private rights, 
limited the offense to overt acts of war against its exist- 
ence or authority, or adhering to its armed enemies, giv- 
ing them aid and comfort. 

The Mythology of the Ancients represented the 
enormity and hideousness of rebellion under the figure 
of the monster, Typhon. Lord Bacon, interpreting the 
fable, says : 

"And now the disaffected, uniting their force, at 
length break out into open rebellion, which, producing 
infinite mischiefs, . . is represented by the horrid and 
multiplied deformity of Typhon, with his hundred heads, 
denoting the divided powers ; his flaming mouths, denotr 
ing fire and devastation ; his girdles of snakes, denoting 
seiges and destruction ; his iron hands, slaughter and 
cruelty ; his eagle's talons, rapine and plunder ; his 
plumed body, perpetual rumors, contradictory accounts," 
etc., and able for a time to strip from the majesty of the 
state the sinews of its power. 

As patriotism is then both a duty and a delight, and 
treason and rebellion condemned as equally sinful and 
shameful, by every system of religion and every system 



[ 17] 

of law, by the reason and instincts of mankind, whence 
are civil wars, and whence especially came ours? 

Oftener, in governments where the sovereignty is 
hereditary in the line of family descent, disputed suc- 
cessions divide the allegiance of the people, and are set- 
tled by the arbitrament of arms. In despotisms, op- 
pressed and burdened populations revolt against tyran- 
nies, too severe and painful for longer endurance ; and rev- 
olution becomes the last resort and remedy for men who 
love liberty better than life. 

But the Rebellion of the Confederate States, in 1861, 
was of a different class. It was not a war of factions, 
supporting rival claimants to an official succession, both 
acknowledging the legitimacy of the institutions of gov- 
ernment ; nor was it an attempted revolution in behalf of 
right against power. It was, on the contrary, a deter- 
mined and desperate struggle, not merely to overthrow a 
government, but to. destroy the nationality represented 
by it. 

The conspiracy which found in it its culmination 
was an old one, and at first unconscious of its true na- 
ture and direction. Its germ appeared in the opposition 
developed to the original adoption of National Institu- 
tions as formulated in the Federal Constitution. It ap- 
peared soon after in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
tions of '98, imputed to Jefferson, but which were hardlv 
consistent with that theory of National Sovereignty upon 
which he must have relied for a conviction of treason 
against Aaron Burr ; it was revived in the doctrine of 



[ 18] 

Nullification, as defended by Calhoun and his school, 
leading logically to Secession and Civil War. 

It was founded on a complete and fundamental mis- 
conception of the character of the political institutions of 
the country, and of the relation of the governments of the 
States, to that of the United States, and a failure to realize 
the truth, that behind and below both these instrumental- 
ities of political action there was a constituency that was 
their originating and supporting cause, the unity of which 
made one nation of all the people. The false doctrine which 
embodied these misconceptions was styled the doctrine of 
State Rights ; but erroneously, for there had been no de- 
nial that the States had indestructible rights. The only 
controversy had been to define what they were, and who 
were the judges of their limits. The real meaning and 
mischief of the false dogma was State Supremacy, for 
it taught that to the States, and not to the United States, 
was committed the right to decide the boundary of their 
respective jurisdictions. Each in respect to the powers 
delegated or reserved was, of course, independent of the 
other, and in that sense sovereign ; but inasmuch as the 
Constitution and laws of the United States made in pur- 
suance thereof, and all treaties made under their author- 
ity, it is declared, shall be the supreme law of the land, 
and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, 
any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the 
contrary notwithstanding ; and, inasmuch, as it is further 
declared, that the judicial power of the United States 
shall extend to all cases in law and equity, arising under 
the Constitution, the laws of the United States, and the 



[ 19 ] 

treaties made under their authority, it is apparent that 
by the very frame of the fundamental and organic struc- 
ture of the National Authority, the Supreme Sovereignty, 
in all its relations to individuals, to domestic States and 
foreign nations, belongs to that Constituency which is 
rightly designated as the people of the United States, and 
is exercised by that government which represents and ef- 
fectuates their collective and national will. It is this su- 
premacy of jurisdiction and authority that constitutes our 
Nationality, and is essential to it. In this view, the unit 
of power and dignity is the Nation ; the States are sig- 
nificant merely as its parts and fractions. The National 
government is the center and circumference that incloses 
and unites within its complete circle the entire aggregate 
of our political institutions, and integrates them into one 
harmonious, co-operating whole. 

Abroad, it establishes our place as one in the world's 
family of independent, equal, and sovereign Nations. At 
home, within the sphere of its prescribed powers, and de- 
termining their limits and applications, without responsi- 
bility to any superior, it acts upon the individual people 
whose allegiance it commands, with the irresistible energy 
and limitless resources of the supreme and sovereign will 
of an indivisible people. It is the result and exponent — 
the consequence, rather than the cause — of those common 
features and characteristics which belong to us as one 
people living in one land, which, in the aggregate, consti- 
tute a National character, the development of which, in 
social and political action, represents in history our 
National life and spirit. It is the ideal of all patriotic 



[ 20 ] 

aspiration ; the inspiration and object of our public hopes ; 
the shield of our security ; the guardian of our persons 
and rights ; the defender of our interests ; our present 
help in every time of earthly need. The sway of its law 
is the bond of our peace and the pledge of our prosper- 
ity ; the supremacy of its authority, the condition and 
cause of order, harmony, and co-operation among all the 
possible conflicts and jealousies of subordinate political 
agencies; its flag — " the banner of beauty and glory" — 
the symbol of our power and pride, the emblem of our 
unity, the imperial standard of our loyal and reverent 
devotion. 

It is not inconsistent with this spirit to value and 
cherish the local attachments which connect us with the 
States of our nativity and abode; but only in an inferior 
and subordinate degree. Our first duty and our chief 
love are due to the Nation, which alone constitutes our 
Country. For the principal value of our citizenship of 
the State is that it confers upon us the dignity and privi- 
lege of our Nationality. 

In contempt of this view of our Constitutional or- 
ganization as a Nation, the opposing theory was taught of 
the supremacy of the States, the subordination of the 
Union. According to this doctrine, the only sources and 
supports of political authority, known in our system, 
were the States, while the Federal Government, under its 
Constitution, was merely a mode of their agency. Of 
course, upon such a construction of our political relations, 
the only patriotism of which, as citizens, we were capable, 
consisted in allegiance to the State of our domicil; for 



[21] 

loyaltv is the expression of fealty to a person, either 
natural or political ; it can not be exacted or yielded to 
an inanimate parchment or compact. So that the obliga- 
tions of the Federal Constitution ceased to bind individ- 
uals who were released from the duty of obedience by 
the sovereign authority of their States ; and the States, 
themselves, could not be made responsible, for they had 
no political superiors. Hence it was thought, at the time, 
by some public men, that there was no Constitutional 
warrant to attempt the coercion of the States, and writers, 
in that interest, denominate the rebellion against the 
National Government as a war between States. 

And founding upon this false interpretation of the 
Constitutional facts of our history, the National life was 
assailed in organized and bloody war. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the inspiring 
purpose and main motive of the Rebellion was to estab- 
lish the abstract theory of the supremacy of the States. 
That theory was used as the legal excuse and justification 
of the asserted right to renounce the authority of the 
Federal Constitution ; but the right was not exercised 
merely to assert its existence. There were ulterior ob- 
jects and purposes which enlisted the sympathies and 
united the efforts, not merely of States, but of a Section, 
and that without regard to State lines, and even in dis- 
obedience of State authority. Such was notably the case 
of some distinguished public men, and thousands of 
others, in States which never by any act of secession sanc- 
tioned or justified their course, who broke their allegiance 
to both State and Nation to swell the ranks of the Rebel- 



[22] 

lion, to adhere to the Confederate government, or to give 
it aid and comfort. 

Accordingly, we find powerful interests, partly pe- 
cuniary, partly political, pervading a section of the country, 
which organized and arrayed its public sentiment to erad- 
icate every seed of dissent within it, and to defend itself 
against every hostility from without. These interests, it 
is needless to say, all grew out of the institution of Negro 
Slavery. They intrenched themselves early behind the 
ramparts of State sovereignty and supremacy. Upon this 
basis was founded the political power of the slaveholding 
interest, known in our history as the Slave Power. 

One of its most signal struggles with the National 
spirit was upon the question of tariff duties, levied with a 
discrimination in favor of American manufactures. It 
was supposed that, as to all its principal products, except 
sugar, slave labor would be rendered more profitable to 
its owners, by free access to the markets of the world, in 
direct exchange for foreign manufactures, and that a dis- 
criminating duty against foreign fabrics was a tax levied 
on their produce for the benefit of the home manufacture.- 
But instead of resting satisfied with an appeal to the gen- 
eral intelligence and the common sense of justice of the 
whole country, the cotton-producing interest threatened 
forcible resistance to the execution of the revenue laws, 
through State authority, and under the banner of Nullifi- 
cation, denied and defied the National authority. 

This, however, was a mere episode. It was an inci- 
dental illustration of a more general fact, which soon be- 
gan to become manifest, and which eventuated in civil 



[ 23] 

war. It was, that the continued existence of slavery was in- 
compatible with the permanence of National instittitions. 
The exigencies of the slaveholding interest demanded sac- 
rifices which could only be made at the expense, and by 
the ultimate extinction of all the ideas which lay at the 
foundation of our existence as a Nation. Slavery was 
rapidly making of us two peoples, in place of one, and 
separating us so widely in thought, feeling, culture, and 
every constituent of character and motive of conduct, as 
to make any mere political bond of union a name without 
reality. It was more disintegrating than if it had suc- 
ceeded in teaching the two sections different languages ; 
because, with apparent continued use of but one, it had 
introduced such a confusion of thought as to make their 
communication incomprehensible. Their ideas were not 
capable of mutual translation. What to one was good, 
was to the other evil ; and contradiction and mutual ex- 
clusion was substituted for the fellowship of sympathy 
and a community of aims and purposes. The immortal 
Declaration of our National Independence, which had 
been supposed to be founded upon eternal, unchangeable, 
and indestructible truths of reason, and to formulate the 
justification of human right for all mankind, had become 
the subject of derision as a series of sophisms and glitter- 
ing generalities: while the National Constitution, with 
the glosses which had been imposed upon its practical 
construction, was denounced, on the other hand, as a 
" covenant with death, and a league with hell." The right 
freely to speak and write, and peaceably to assemble for 
the consideration and discussion of public questions, was 



[24] 

denied, wherever its exercise threatened the safety of slave- 
holding or disturbed the consciences of those who prac- 
ticed it ; while, on their part, their teachers and leaders 
sedulously inculcated the belief that it was the mission of 
their situation, laid upon them by a necessity both human 
and divine, to extend, strengthen, and perpetuate the 
system. 

The sole condition on which it tolerated political 
association was the recognition of its right of domination. 
Its alternative was rule or ruin. So that when it was 
driven from the seat of national power by a political rev- 
olution, wrought by public sentiment and in strict ac- 
cordance with law, without waiting for any overt act of 
hostility, with desperate foresight of its inevitable doom, 
it plunged into the dread abyss — 

" Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition." 

Under the mocking banner of State Rights, it opened 
its cannon upon the National Power, and when Sumter 
fell, it buried forever under its ruins the lost cause of a 
Confederacy, of which slavery was proclaimed to be the 
corner-stone. 

It was a victory, not only for the Nation, but for 
mankind, and marks a step in the progress of the race 
that can not and will not be reversed. The evils of the 
war — and they are many that follow always in its train — 
will be forgotten and effaced; but the good will remain 
forever. Nationality restored upon the basis of univer- 
sal freedom, and the political and civil equality of all the 



[25] 

citizens of the Commonwealth, is a result that vindicates 
itself, needing neither apology nor defense. Those who 
were overcome in the conflict, as well as those who over- 
came them, can unite, without bitterness or hypocrisy, in 
a triumph that divides the trophies of its good equally 
with both. And when those who were our brethren and 
became our enemies, but not more ours than their own, 
are able and willing, as they ought, to join with us in 
grateful and joyous thanksgiving to the gracious God 
who turned the scales of battle not against them, but 
against their cause, we, too, can, without humiliation or 
self-contempt, join with them in solemn celebrations and 
funeral rites over the graves of Confederate as well as 
Federal dead, as sacrifices and expiations not made in 
vain. 

The sum of the whole matter is, that the life of the 
Nation is essential to the life of the people; that its au- 
thority and power are supreme, and not subordinate; 
that its integrity is vital to the growth and perfection of 
that rational and orderly, but impartial and benevolent 
liberty, which constitutes the sacred deposit intrusted to 
its keeping, and contained within the forms of its consti- 
tution ; that neither sectional strife nor party contention 
must ever invade its sphere or draw in question its essen- 
tial jurisdiction ; that it shall be cherished as an ally and 
friend of all legitimate powers of the States, and not as 
an alien and enemy of the liberties of its people; that 
the sentiment of nationality shall be cherished as the 
spirit of patriotism, and our love of country made, in 
good faith, to embrace not the locality bounded by our 



[26] 

personal or party horizon, but the whole galaxy and con- 
stellation of fixed and immutable stars that fill the heaven 
of our hopes; and that no spirit of faction shall be al- 
lowed to confuse the boundaries that divide and separate 
the allotments of authority and jurisdiction which have 
been wisely made to embody and enforce the constitu- 
tional will of the people. 

In this unnatural contest George H. Thomas ad- 
hered to the government to which he had sworn allegi- 
ance, and not to its enemies in arms. He was born, it is 
true, in Virginia, but his home and country was the 
United States of America. He had been educated at the 
expense of its government at a National Military Acad- 
emy, upon the condition, if not express, at least honora- 
bly implied, that he should devote his military knowledge 
and skill in support of its authority and in obedience to 
its laws. He had chosen the military profession as the 
pursuit of his life, and had served for twenty-one years in 
its armies, receiving his reward in the honors and emolu- 
ments of its service. He had performed the duties of 
his successive ranks, at posts and stations to which he had • 
from time to time been assigned, without regard to the 
boundaries of States. He had stood guard at the out- 
posts and picketed the frontiers of the vast area of na- 
tional domain, scarcely less than the continent, and 
thought he was defending the homes of his countrymen. 
He had followed the flag of the Nation into a foreign 
territory and participated in a war that extended our Na- 
tional border to the Pacific Ocean. He knew that it was 
the duty of the Army to uphold the civil power of the 



Hfi 9 l 



[ 27] 

Government, the President of which was, by the Consti- 
tution, its Commander-in-chief, and that that instrument 
made no distinction between foreign and domestic ene- 
mies. He knew that Washington had employed the 
National military force for the suppression of insur- 
rection and the enforcement of the laws of Congress, 
and that Marshal lent no countenance to a doctrine 
that would seduce him from his military allegiance. 
His reason told him where his duty lay ; his conscience 
bade him follow it. In the uniform of an officer of 
the army of the United States he followed its flag across 
the Potomac, at the head of its troops and in obe- 
dience to its lawful commands, upon the soil of his native 
State, sacred to him only as it was consecrated to the 
Constitution and the Union. And if his conduct and 
career was in contrast with that of others of her sons 
whom, on that account, she has preferred to honor, never- 
theless, a generation in Virginia will yet arise who will 
learn and confess the truth, that George H. Thomas, 
when he lifted his sword to bar the pathway of her se- 
cession, loved her as well as these and served her better. 

This monument, consecrated to-day to him whose 
fame we celebrate, is also sacred to the memory of that 
invisible host without whom he was nothing — the unre- 
corded dead, the untitled soldiers of the Union, the 
vanished and nameless Army of the Republic, who were 
not merely willing to die, but to be forgotten, so that the 
memory of the good their death should bring might live 
after them. As long as the love of country shall survive 
among the generations of this people, or liberty make its 



[28] 

home under the protection of our National institutions,, 
the example of their patriotic devotion will not die for 
lack of honorable remembrance or worthy imitation. We 
stand with uncovered heads and hearts laid bare, to-day, 
in the presence of an innumerable company of these 
heroic spirits — witnesses, sympathizing with us in these 
solemn and patriotic ceremonials, honoring the memory 
of our great Soldier and Patriot. The listening ear of 
fancy catches their choral song, as it floats and dies away 
upon the air — 

" Yea, let all good things await 
Him who cares not to be great 
But as he saves or serves the State ! " 

To the President of the United States. 

And now, Mr. President, it only remains for me, in 
the name and on behalf of the Society of the Army of 
the Cumberland, to present and deliver, through you, to 
the people of the United States, whose chosen representa- 
tive you are, this statue of George H. Thomas. Protected 
and preserved by their care, in this seat and capital of 
their National power, may it long stand as a t6ken of the 
honor which a grateful people bestow upon conspicuous 
and unselfish devotion to public duty. And when marble 
shall have crumbled to decay, and brass become corroded 
by the rust of time, may the liberties of the people which 
he defended still survive, illustrated and supported by 
successive generations, inspired to deeds of virtue and 
heroic duty by the memory of his example. 




* D083S BROS. $• 

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